


fell asleep beneath the flowers for a couple of hours

by ThunderAndMadness



Category: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Character Study, I am the angst fairy, M/M, Musing, ptsd implicit, rape implicit but subtly enough that you may have to squint, teeny shoutout to KOTOR here if you were paying attention, that means the duty falls to me, this is angsty as hell, this is the saddest shit I've written in a long time, very few people in this fandom are making Poe sad right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 17:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5549126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderAndMadness/pseuds/ThunderAndMadness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He drags his mattress back up onto the cot frame, but he doesn't sleep there. He can't bring himself to move the other two mattresses; they lie there like ghosts on the floor."</p>
            </blockquote>





	fell asleep beneath the flowers for a couple of hours

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hayley Jane and the Primates' "Gasoline". 
> 
> This is set in a mild AU where Finn and Rey stay on the base for a while before going after Kylo Ren. 
> 
> Fair warning: there isn't a happy ending to this one, folks.

It comes down, in the end, to this: Poe and his tiny cot. He's memorized every crack in the ceiling of his bunk. 

He was an insomniac before he was ever a pilot, but it's gotten worse over the years. Poe once said that all his best skills were learned in the middle of the night. He cuts his own hair. He fixes his own droids. He tells himself bedtime stories.  
None of it helps, of course, but it's nice to fill the dark with something. 

Nobody signs up to fly X Wings who isn't a little sleepless, a little haunted. Pilots fall out of the sky all the time. People die at the hands of a copilot on a blaster turret. It happens so much the pilots don't even bother to talk about it anymore. Victories are shared, sure, passed around like a love note, but nobody talks about it when somebody's ship comes back in the tow of another. Pilots go missing. The ones who don't get dragged into the infirmary or the morgue tend to crawl into a bottle eventually. They don't come out. 

Poe had always been a drinker. Maybe for as long as he's been running from Yavin IV; maybe a little longer. He drinks because it makes him laugh; it greases his smile and makes it feel a little less stiff on his face. 

When they came they were like tiny stars, almost untouched by the horrors that wear down the hulls of X Wings and their pilots. Finn had that forever shocked look, like everything was new to him. Rey had capable hands and a smile that made Poe's hands sweat. They were stars the way the real stars had once seemed to him; warm, bright, always drawing him in. And while they were there with him it was like everything was coated in a thin film of light, casting sunspots on everything he looked at. 

They were so young, but they needed him. And they needed each other, and he needed them the way he needed to fall asleep, like they were the cure for a stomach ache he hadn't known was there. Finn made Poe's smiles come quick; he made Poe's charm feel genuine. Rey made his heart pound, made him feel like a teenager again. 

The first night they spent together was all three of them, and it was like they were children getting to know each other in some daydream untouched by war. Neither Finn nor Rey had anywhere to stay on the base, overcrowded as it was. Poe took them in as roommates. He could tell by the way Finn's fingers twitched and the way Rey was always pacing that they wouldn't sleep much either. They talked for as long as they could stay awake. Finn had this habit of holding onto Poe and Rey when he had a point to make, like he needed their energy to finish his ideas. 

Poe asked, jokingly, if he could braid Rey's hair. He expected a laugh and a _you wish_ , but instead he saw her in a rare moment of hesitation, her eyes widening before she took her hair down and sat in front of him on the floor, let him put his hands in her hair. 

The three of them fell asleep together in a tangle of limbs on the floor. Poe made the effort to find mattresses for his guests, but the three of them were spending their nights holding onto each other like they might get lost, like Rey could be lifted up by the Force and taken away, or Finn could be reclaimed by the First Order's 501st division at any time. Like Poe could fall out of the sky. They were always tangled in each other. It only made sense to move Poe's cot down to the floor and push the other two mattresses together. 

And he slept.  
It was like he was in a living dream where everything was touched with gold. Finn's hand always in his, Rey always beside them, her arm wrappings forever coming undone. Poe woke from his nightmares with two soothing bodies wrapped around him, one or both of them always waking up to kiss him back into sleep.  
Sometimes he even woke up smiling. 

He could have sworn he was daydreaming all the time. Teaching Rey to fly, teaching Finn to shoot with better aim, telling them stories about flying and fighting and Yavin IV. He gave up every secret he had. 

And now they're gone again, like sunshine that flashed from a cloudy sky and disappeared again. Finn is comatose in the infirmary. Poe goes to sit by him every day, like he's keeping a vigil for the dead. He holds his breath and imagines he can see Finn stirring.  
Rey comes back bleeding and haunted. Her eyes seemdarker somehow. She spendsone night in the base before taking off again. She cries into his shoulder and lets him curl around her like he can protect her from what's already happened. She takes the Millenium Falcon, Chewie, and the last vestiges of a family Poe had. 

Poe has memorized every crack in his ceiling. He drags his mattress back up onto the cot frame, but he doesn't sleep there. He can't bring himself to move the other two mattresses; they lie there like ghosts on the floor. He stumbles over them sometimes, has to stifle a scream. 

X Wing pilots don't talk about these things. Poe is too good to fall out of the sky. The infirmary and the morgue reach out long fingers for him, but he stays away when he isn't watching Finn. The medical staff give him his jacket back; they put Finn in a hospital gown instead. It smells like the metal of a blaster from Finn and engine oil from Rey, and Poe puts it aside. It doesn't fit him right anymore. 

He does what he knows how to do best: flying, droid repair, telling himself broken pieces of stories. It doesn't help any more than it ever did, and it feels hollow now. It doesn't make the bunk warmer. He stops after a while. He takes to Edean ale. It doesn't make his smiles any easier, but it does numb his face. No one says a word.

It comes down to Poe and his tiny cot, his empty cold room. He watches the sky for a trace of the Falcon. He watches Finn's face for a twitch of life. He waits.

**Author's Note:**

> What is Edean ale? Edean is the Czerka Corporation (Strexcorp's ancestor) name for Kashyyk, the Wookie planet. I'm not sure if they have ale, but I imagine it would pack a hell of a wallop. 
> 
> As they said in my heyday, concrit always welcomed.


End file.
